Expertise

Biography

Dr. Michael Dettinger is a research hydrologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, Branch of Western Regional Research, and a research associate at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who researchs the hydrology, climate, and water resources of the West, focusing on regional surface water and groundwater resources, hydroclimatic variability, and climate-change impacts.

Dr. Michael Dettinger is a research hydrologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, Branch of Western Regional Research, and a research associate at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, California. Dettinger has researched the hydrology, climate, and water resources of the West for over 30 years, focusing on regional surface water and groundwater resources and modeling, hydroclimatic variability, and climate-change impacts. He was physical-sciences team leader for DOI-DOD ecosystem planning in the Mojave Desert, founding member of the CIRMONT Western Mountain Climate Sciences Consortium, climate advisor to the CALFED Bay-Delta Restoration Program, research advisor for USGS Surface-Water Discipline, member of the USGS Global Change Science Strategic Planning Team, and lead author of the Water Resources chapter of the 2013 National Climate Assessment. Dettinger has degrees from the University of California, San Diego (Physics), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Civil Engineering/Water Resources), and a PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles (Atmospheric Sciences). He has authored and co-authored 90+ scientific articles and chapters in scholarly journals and books, 20+ government reports, and 70+ other articles in less formal outlets.

Dettinger, Michael, 2005. Changes in streamflow timing in the western United States in recent decades... from the National Streamflow Information Program. Geological Survey (U.S.) Fact Sheet 2005-3018, 4 p. [Link]

McCabe, G.J., and Dettinger, M.D., 2002, Primary modes and predictability of year-to-year snowpack variations in the western United States from teleconnections with Pacific Ocean climate: Journal of Hydrometeorology, 3, 13-25.

Cayan, D.R., Kammerdiener, S., Dettinger, M.D., Caprio, J.M., and Peterson, D.H., 2001, Changes in the onset of spring in the western United States: Bulletin, American Meteorological Society, 82, 399-415.

Atmospheric rivers (ARs) are strongly linked to extreme winter precipitation events in the Western U.S., accounting for 80 percent of extreme floods in the Sierra Nevada and surrounding lowlands. In 2010, the U.S. Geological Survey developed the ARkStorm extreme storm scenario for California to quantify risks from extreme winter storms and to...

Floods are amongst the most dangerous natural hazards in terms of economic damage. Whilst a growing number of studies have examined how river floods are influenced by climate change, the role of natural modes of interannual climate variability remains poorly understood. We present the first global assessment of the influence of El Niño–Southern...

Atmospheric rivers (ARs) have, in recent years, been recognized as the cause of the large majority of major floods in rivers all along the U.S. West Coast and as the source of 30%–50% of all precipitation in the same region. The present study surveys the frequency with which ARs have played a critical role as a common cause of the end of droughts...

Downscaled and hydrologically modeled projections from an ensemble of 16 Global Climate Models suggest that flooding may become more intense on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountains, the primary source for California’s managed water system. By the end of the 21st century, all 16 climate projections for the high greenhouse-gas emission...

Recent projections of global climate changes in response to increasing greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere include warming in the Southwestern US and, especially, in the vicinity of Lake Tahoe of from about +3°C to +6°C by end of century and changes in precipitation on the order of 5-10 % increases or (more commonly) decreases,...

During Northern Hemisphere winters, the West Coast of North America is battered by extratropical storms. The impact of these storms is of paramount concern to California, where aging water supply and flood protection infrastructures are challenged by increased standards for urban flood protection, an unusually variable weather regime, and...

This study is motivated by diverse needs for better forecasts of extreme precipitation and floods. It is enabled by unique hourly observations collected over six years near California’s Russian River and by recent advances in the science of atmospheric rivers (ARs). This study fills key gaps limiting the prediction of ARs and, especially, their...

The outputs from two General Circulation Models (GCMs) with two emissions scenarios were downscaled and bias-corrected to develop regional climate change projections for the Tahoe Basin. For one model—the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory or GFDL model—the daily model results were used to drive a distributed hydrologic model. The watershed...

Natural climate variability will continue to be an important aspect of future regional climate even in the midst of long-term secular changes. Consequently, the ability of climate models to simulate major natural modes of variability and their teleconnections provides important context for the interpretation and use of climate change projections....

Ancient blue oak trees are still widespread across the foothills of the Coast Ranges, Cascades, and Sierra Nevada in California. The most extensive tracts of intact old-growth blue oak woodland appear to survive on rugged and remote terrain in the south Coast Ranges and on the foothills west and southwest of Mt. Lassen. In our sampling of old-...

Atmospheric rivers (ARs) are a dominant mechanism for generating intense wintertime precipitation along the U.S. West Coast. While studies over the past 10 years have explored the impact of ARs in, and west of, California’s Sierra Nevada and the Pacific Northwest’s Cascade Mountains, their influence on the weather across the intermountain west...

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), a nonregulatory Federal science agency with national scope and responsibilities, is uniquely positioned to serve the Nation’s needs in understanding and responding to global change, including changes in climate, water availability, sea level, land use and land cover, ecosystems, and global biogeochemical...